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Unusual Parishioners

For the past five centuries, the Barcelona Cathedral has housed an unusual guest within its cloisters. As a matter of tradition, the church maintains a gaggle of 13 geese in honor of Barcelona’s patron saint Eulalia, who according to legend died at the age of 13 after enduring 13 different tortures at the hands of roman soldiers.

Martin of Tours is the patron saint of geese (yes, there really is a patron saint of geese 😉 ) I’m not 100% certain that anyone even remembers why they’re harboring geese in Eulalia’s honor. The most I can glean from the church is that it is done out of tradition. How it started, or why, seems like a bit of a mystery.

Love the photo Brian. Did you have the idea that, as geese are inquisitive, one may look at the camera, and so waited for it or were you framing the shot of the geese and church when this one decided to photo bomb the shot? Either way it is a classic 👍

I don’t know about the geese at Barcelona, but in the UK geese (along with many other water birds) were classed as fish by the church and therefore could be eaten of a Friday according to Catholic tradition. Naturally every monastery had a flock of geese